Headache
by anon33125
Summary: Just some one-shots of Kakashi. First one, he goes back to his apartment to heal a headache after training his three genin. Set pre-everything, no spoilers, just musings. Characters owned by Kishimoto
1. A Headache

Kakashi pinched the bridge of his nose between his forefinger and thumb, he could feel a headache coming on. It was days like these that made him wish he could have stayed in ANBU. Between Naruto and Sasuke's bickering and Sakura caught between yelling at Naruto or mooning over Sasuke, simple D rank missions with the three were truly unbearable. He almost wished they could go back to Mist and fight Zabuza again, a nice A rank mission to keep them busy.

He sighed deeply through his nose as he finally collapsed on his bed in his own quiet apartment. He'd landed a place in one of Konoha's elderly citizens' special housing buildings. His ANBU team had made endless fun of him for it, behind his back of course, but he knew he'd landed the jackpot. The woman down the hall made the best chocolate chip cookies, the man across from him tended a rooftop garden (which Kakashi and Tenzo had helped build) so they got fresh free vegetables every season, and, the best part of all, was the silence. Elderly folks had no interest in the drinking, gambling lifestyle that most shinobi found fulfilling. They also had no constant rambunctious children crying and banging on walls. There were no loud parties and the water for showering was never too cold.

Sure, at 17, when he got the place, he was as far as could be from elderly, but even then, his pull with Sandaime was clear. He would only accept the ANBU captain job if he were allowed to live in a civilian over-the-age-of-50 compound. The Hokage had pulled through, so Kakashi became one of the most legendary ANBU captains in return. And, now that he was training the brats, being able to come home to this serenity was the best he could have asked for. His headache was already being soothed as soon as he'd stepped through the building's entrance gate.

Of course there was also the fact that he had a tendency to get chakra exhausted to the extent of only being as physically capable as the average 85-year old man, but that was beside the point.

After a moment of bliss lying on his bed, he stood and pulled off his jounin vest. That was quickly followed by his long-sleeve black shirt and his protective chainmail shirt underneath, leaving only his skin-tight sleeveless black shirt with the mask attached. Then went the bindings on his feet and his day-wear pants. On went his comfy sweatpants. He padded barefoot to his kitchen and started a kettle on the stove to boil water for tea.

As he waited for the tea to boil, he went to his bathroom to wash his face. Kakashi washed his face almost obsessively, when you have sensitive skin, you really have no choice unless you want to be itching all the time. That was actually the whole reason for the mask. Kakashi was mostly albino, the silver-white hair, the pale white skin? Sure, those attributes made many people find him insanely attractive (and, you know, his lean muscles), but being albino definitely wasn't all it cracked up to be, he got sick easily as an infant, so his parents eventually put him in a mask. His skin would often break out in hives or rashes, if something so simple as even the fragrance of laundry soap was changed. At first, he had been told that exposure was key to building up a resistance to the factors that bothered him. Eventually, he learned that it was just easier to keep himself fully covered. If the rest of his village was content to consider him 'mysterious' or 'hip and cool', he was fine with that. They really didn't need to be aware of every personal detail about him. As long as no one went near his laundry detergent or forced him to take his clothes off. Both of these are the exact reason he hated hospitals.

Hospital sheets were always washed in bleach detergents, bleach just so happened to be one of the most aggravating substances to Kakashi's skin. And the hospital always removed most of his clothes, so every inch of his skin became red, raw, and itchy. Out of all the hospital employees, he could only persuade about 5 of the nurses to rewash his sheets in his personal hypo-allergenic, scentless detergent. Otherwise, the medics paid him no attention, said it was just his wounds healing, or that he was just being dramatic, they had more insistent cases to deal with.

So, he washed his face for the third time that day, fixed his cup of tea, and settled himself cross-legged in his favorite old armchair by the window so he could set his book and his mug on the sill. He had recently gotten this new book from the bookstore and was excited to finally be able to sit down with it. It was an exploration of the ancient underground cities deep within Wind country, hidden below the deserts. Kakashi had a bit of earth-natured chakra to his name, and he'd used many a jutsu to go underground, so this area of research fascinated him. People who built cities underground as an escape, or cities that were built above ground, but the earth overtook them and buried them. He took a sip of his tea and cracked open the book, settling back to enjoy the last remaining silent rays of the sunset, his headache almost completely banished.


	2. Meeting with the Sannin

Tsunade sat behind the Hokage desk, filling out paperwork, trying to ignore the man standing in front of her.

"We need to talk to him," Jiraiya said, crossing his arms over his chest. "Naruto and I are only back in town for a few days and I know you won't have this conversation with him on your own accord."

"I know, Jiraiya, but I really have to finish filling out this paperwork," she tried to convince him, sounding tired and frustrated. Jiraiya slammed his fist in front of her.

"Summon him!"

Tsunade acted immediately on instinct, forming the single-handed seal a Hokage uses to summon ANBU.

The man who appeared in front of them was obviously not expecting to be summoned to the Hokage Tower at that particular moment. He was barefoot, the bindings on his pants had not been done, and the only top he was wearing was sleeveless and skin-tight, extending all the way up to a mask covering the lower half of his face. He wore no forehead protector causing some of his gravity-defying silver hair to flop forward into his eyes.

"What do you want?" Kakashi growled in a tone most unbefitting for addressing the highest-ranking ninja in the village. Somehow the lazy crossing of his arms cause him to look more frightening. Tsunade seemed temporarily incapable of speech.

"You were in the middle of something?" Jiraiya tried, unsuccessfully, to hide a snicker.

"I was about to shower," the younger nin grumbled, a crease appearing between his eyebrows.

"That ANBU summoning jutsu really works well, doesn't it Tsunade?" Jiraiya commented, spurring Tsunade out of her stupor to wipe the drool off her mouth. "I recall Minato mentioning one of the main reasons he made Kakashi ANBU was to keep track of him with it."

Kakashi didn't respond beyond turning his glare to focus on Tsunade, who looked like she was trying desperately to remember that he was HALF HER AGE… She coughed a couple of times to regain her composure.

"_What_ do you _want_?" Kakashi ground out again as Jiraiya let loose a few more snickers and Tsunade moved papers around.

"To talk to you, brat." She responded sarcastically. "The Third left some of his notes behind on the ninja who he had future plans for. One of them was you. You were on his short list for Fifth Hokage." She finally looked up from her papers to find Kakashi looking unsurprised.

"He'd mentioned it a few times. So?" The silver-haired nin shrugged uncaring.

"Preparations were never officially made and you had a team to look after, as well as a young missing gennin to worry about, so Jiraiya and I became the Elders' choice." Tsunade watched him carefully for a reaction, and got nothing. She sighed heavily and resisted the urge to throw a particularly large book at his head. "Kakashi! Are you in full support of my being the Fifth Hokage?"

That question caused his jaw to drop.

"Of course I am!" He replied, a bit offended that she even had to ask. "I refused to accept his nomination every time we discussed it. I don't want to be Hokage."

Tsunade furrowed her brow in indignation and Jiraiya let out a full laugh this time. Kakashi and Tsunade never could successfully communicate with one another.

"Why is that so urgent you had to call me at this precise moment?" Kakashi ran a hand through his hair to get it out of his face, reminding himself that he needed to get it cut soon.

"There is a war coming. I had to make sure you were fully behind me. Beside me." Tsunade turned her attention back to her paperwork, not really wanting to give him her full attention. "I want to put you back in ANBU missions while you're without a team, a hand written note from the Third strictly forbids it. Why is that?"

Kakashi raised his bare wrists to her.

"I tried to commit suicide." He stated, sounding rather bored.

"WHAT?" she glared up at him and slammed a few pieces of paper into the desk with her fist.

"Once in ANBU before Sandaime made me move in with Tenzo, then a second time when he told me I was released from my ANBU duties."

Tsunade had stomped around her desk at this point, her hands were on her hips, and she was preparing a good yelling rant.

"You are SO STUPID! WHY on EARTH would you DO THAT?" She looked like she had a lot more rant to go, but Kakashi just dropped his wrists and shrugged in bored defeat. She shut up as they stood, barely inches apart. He looked into her eyes and she searched in his. For a few moments they just stared, the world stood still as, for a moment, they understood each other. Tsunade knew how that felt, she'd hidden from loss for so long in alcohol and gambling. Kakashi had hidden as well, in his cold exterior. They knew pain, they both knew the feeling of their heart ripping to pieces and not being able to do a thing about it. Rather than yelling louder and getting angrier, she sighed and found herself holding back tears.

"Are you alright to go back into ANBU now?" Tsunade finally questioned softly. Kakashi lifted a single shoulder.

"I don't know," he murmured softly. "I would rather continue with solo missions and jounin missions. Though I wouldn't mind working partner missions with Tenzo again."

Tsunade nodded, considered that, and then found herself reaching for his hands. As she took them, he found himself unwilling to fight her looking at them. Slowly, Tsunade turned Kakashi's hands over in her own to look at his wrists. She'd always wondered why he wore those short, fingerless gloves, but now she could see it plainly. There were crisscrossing deep white scars on the insides of both wrists, the gloves would be just long enough to hide those scars from sight. After a few minutes, she dropped his hands and he pulled a step back from her.

"Alright, brat," she grumbled, not quite angrily. "I'll put you on a partner mission with your kohai. Then, you'll take some solo A and S rank missions. I also want you on my diplomatic team. The Third is very clear in his notes that you are to be seriously considered essential in the running of this village."

"All I want are the missions, I don't need the diplomacy or the recognition please, Tsunade." He purposefully left out the honorific on her name, to make this a personal request.

She just frowned at him, eyebrows wrinkling. "You're a genius, Kakashi, and virtually flawless at what you do. I need you and your guidance more than I want to admit. You've changed a lot over the years and, as much as it pains me to admit this, I want you by my side here. Help me govern and represent this village." Her voice turned more sincere and less upset as she spoke, as though she were gaining confidence in the words she spoke to him.

"She's right, you know." Jiraiya added softly. "You're one of the greatest assets to this village. Your experiences and your heart and your deep connections with Naruto are what's going to help us change the entire shinobi world. We need you as much as we need him. You can't have a world-changing student without the teacher who can show him how to achieve his ideals."

Kakashi sighed and ran both his hands through his hair. They were shaking slightly now as he bowed his head and his stance slouched. He thought over what the two Sannin were saying to him, he lived so deeply in his world of self-hatred, how could they possibly be right?

"Just think about all this, Kakashi," Jiraiya urged. "We both plan to be around for a while, we just want to be confident that you'll be here to take over when we're not. Naruto still has a lot of growing up to do."

The three stood for a little while longer before Tsunade turned back to her paperwork, Jiraiya turned his attention to a couple scrolls of his presumably new book, and Kakashi basically just tried to compose himself.

"Ok," he said finally, his voice was soft and slightly choked. "I'll think about it."

"You should really get back to that whole showering idea, brat," Tsunade replied grimly, but with a darkly playful glint in her eyes. "You stink."

Kakashi shot her a rude hand gesture and teleported away while Jiraiya just laughed in relief.


	3. Defining Friendship

One of the very few things that no shinobi in the village ever actually took notice of was that whenever Kakashi ended up in the hospital, for some reason or other, the first face he saw upon waking up was a bushy-browed, spandex-wearing concoction of spirit and muscle. It didn't matter if the insane man's face was just a fleeting glimpse in the window or his mouth executed a rather obnoxious snore from a chair beside the hospital bed; what mattered was that he was always, inexplicably, there.

Kakashi had never been one for change; he liked routines, he secretly cherished the fact that he could always count on Gai for ridiculous little things and the man knew him well enough to accept that as practically their friendship pact (minus the spit-handshaking). It was nice to rely on the crazy, to always get exactly what he expected from the other man, and always have him turn up at, oddly, the right times. So when Kakashi saw Team Gai staggering back into the village, with a broken, bleeding and barely conscious team leader, he didn't even hesitate.

He turned up at the hospital as soon as the three young teens had left and made himself at home in one of those obtrusively uncomfortable plastic chairs. He shifted enough so that he could fall asleep watching the slow rise and fall of his great rival's chest.

"Uh, why is Kakashi-sensei sleeping on a hospital chair?" Naruto frowned dumbly, tilting his head and squinting his eyes as he peeked through a crack in the doorway to one of the rooms.

"Baka, be quiet!" Sakura hissed, keeping her voice down while shoving her teammate's head away from the door. "Don't go peeking into patients' rooms!"

"But, Sakura-chan…" Naruto whined, holding his head with one hand and pointing with the other. "Kaka-sensei is in there! And he didn't even get chakra-depleted on our mission!"

Sakura paused as she raised her hand to whack Naruto on the head again. She squinted her eyes, frowning at him, before slowly leaning back to peek into the room as well. Her eyes widened as she took in the sight of a thatch of thick silver hair tufting over the top of a hard plastic bedside chair. "Hnn…"

"Sakura-chan! Naruto-kun!" An all too familiar voice greeted the two young ninja from down the hallway, interrupting their conversation. "You're here to visit Gai-sensei too?!"

"Hmm, Gai-sensei?" Both Naruto and Sakura tilted their heads in question to the room they had been peeping in.

"Hai! He had to open his Gates on our mission, but his performance was fully what I would expect from such a great, awe-inspiring master!" Lee sniffled, rubbing at his eyes with his elbow since his hands were full with a vase of flowers. "He'll be so glad to have company when he wakes up!"

"Ahh…. Sure, Bushy Brows," Naruto stammered, torn between rubbing at his head sheepishly and glancing apprehensively at the doorway. Sakura merely raised an eyebrow, what was Kakashi-sensei doing falling asleep in an uncomfortable position on an uncomfortable chair in Gai-sensei's room? They were Eternal Rivals according to Gai, but she'd always gotten the idea that was a devout one-sided relationship.

Together the three ninja entered the quiet room, careful to make little noise as they noticed both their sensei were still asleep. Lee arranged the flowers on the windowsill while Sakura and Naruto continued frowning between their lazy, aloof sensei on the chair and his exuberant, perfect opposite laying peacefully beneath the white sheets of the hospital bed. Eventually, they decided it might be safest to join Lee by the window, who quietly began preaching to them about the beauty and tranquility of the mornings.

Kakashi, on the other hand, was slowly roused from his sleep; he could feel familiar chakra presences in the room with him which made him sorely tempted to leave before they paid him too much attention. Looking at the bed again though, he noticed Gai's eyes twitching, then his lips and nose, a sure sign the man was waking up. Well, he certainly couldn't leave now.

"Ka….. Ka… sshi," the fashion-impaired man under the sheets murmured softly, voice hoarse and tight, obviously painful to use.

"Shh," Kakashi changed his position abruptly, pushing the presence of others in the small hospital room from his mind, and reaching out to press his hand against Gai's strong, sharp cheekbone. "I'm right here, Gai."

Gai turned his head as much as he could handle, feeling calloused, partially gloved fingers sliding across his face as he turned. Sluggishly he opened his eyes to meet a single charcoal colored one and a tangled mess of spiky silver hair. He felt his face twitching as his lips were tugged into a smirk. As their eyes met, an unspoken conversation flowed through their minds. An exchange which often happened at the memorial stone before the sun had risen or when lying flat on their backs in the grass, panting after a much needed intensely physical challenge. In this way, they spoke words that could never be said, shared feelings which didn't have names, knew gratitude and love in a way very few could ever begin to understand.

Kakashi raised his fingers off of Gai's cheek to then return them quickly in a gentle slap.

"Must be going now, so much to do, so little time," Kakashi removed his hand completely from his friend and quickly made his seals for the teleportation jutsu, leaving the room without having to be confronted by his students' overwhelmingly confused faces.

"Ah, Kakashi just left, didn't he?" Kurenai sighed, shaking her head as she and Asuma entered the room. Sakura, Naruto, and Lee stared, dumbstruck at her.

"To have been blessed with so kind a rival!" Lee gathered his thoughts about him and started weeping manly tears as he rushed to his sensei's bedside. Gai took less than a minute to change from the calm, almost normal man he'd been back into his own version of crazy, letting his own tears of manly emotion fall from his eyes.

"Well, seeing as you're in good hands with your student, Gai, we'll drop by later," Asuma grunted while Kurenai placed their vase of flowers on the windowsill and grabbed the wrists of two stunned ninja still frozen staring at the bed.

"What….. What just happened?" Naruto finally stammered out, looking at Kurenai and Asuma in the hallway.

"He was all, like sweet and caring…" Sakura trailed off, twisting her hands together as she remembered the scene.

"The relationship Gai and Kakashi have is a mystery no one will ever figure out," Asuma chuckled, blowing a ring of smoke out one of the windows at the far end of the hallway where they'd stopped walking.

"Ewww," Naruto shuddered, barely keeping in the homophobic screech he desperately wanted to release. Sakura only grimaced, imaging her very attractive sensei with such a decidedly unattractive weirdo was just too much for her to get a grip on.

"Oh, not like that!" Kurenai quickly countered as she saw where the young ninjas' minds were going. "They've just been through a lot together. Like you and Sasuke will be, when you can finally bring him home again."

"Yeah, but mix in a handful of denial, a few cups of sacrifice, a dash of suicide, and drizzle it all with a healthy heaping of manic depression," Asuma added, artfully twisting his body to avoid the punch Kurenai threw towards him.

"They don't need to know all the personal details, Asuma!"

"Well, you're the one who brought up Sasuke and that kid was depression in human form, if you ask me…"

"I was trying to put it in terms they would understand!"

"But, you said yourself that you don't really understand it, so how could you make them…?"

The two jounin then walked away bickering as though Naruto and Sakura weren't even there. All Sakura had wanted was to get her rounds done early that morning so that she and Naruto could train before her poison lesson with Tsunade. Now she had to make sense of cryptic clues and odd interactions if she were to ever figure out what the hell defined a normal relationship among shinobi. Honestly, she was beginning to think there really was no such thing.

"Sensei are weird," Naruto finally concluded, several minutes after Asuma and Kurenai had disappeared from view. Sakura reigned in all of her viscously circling thoughts and found that she could only nod silently in agreement.


End file.
